Automatic food dispenser for feeding animals, such as automatic dispensers specifically designed for pet animals, as well as the more sturdy type designed for industrial husbandry, are known in the art and are useful for automatically dispensing food material, such as pelletized or powdered dry food to animals.
Such automatic food dispensers of the prior art generally comprise three main elements: a container, or hopper compartment, for temporarily storing the dry food to be dispensed to the intended animal, a power driven feed transfer chamber for dispensing a metered amount, or ration, of dry food on a timely basis, and a conveying means for conveying the dispensed ration to a suitable receptacle such as a feed bowl. The feed transfer chamber generally comprises a rotating element such as, for examples, a rake, a daisy wheel, an auger, or the like, that dispenses dry food from an input port in communication with the hopper compartment, to an output port in communication with the conveying means.
While these prior art devices generally offer an automatic food dispenser for dispensing dry food to animals, they also entail one or more of the following disadvantages:
a) they are generally specifically adapted for only one type of dry food material for animals, either pelletized or powdered/granulated dry food;
b) their mode of operation for dispensing predetermined amount of feed is generally based on a timed operation of a rotating element within the dispenser, and without monitoring means on the actual dispensing of the food;
c) they are generally not readily designed to be quickly and easily disassembled for periodic cleaning. Thus, moisture trapped in dry food dust accumulated in compact mechanical assemblies of the dispenser is prone to develop mould, a generally unacceptable problem in industrial husbandry of animals destined for human consumption.
Against this background, there exists a need for a new and improved food dispenser. It is a general object of the present invention to provide a new and improved food dispenser for dispensing dry food.